Adrian Bateman wrote:
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-fieldset-element
> [...]
> Is there a reason why the disabled attribute shouldn't also disable
> controls that are descendants of the first legend element? See the
> attached test case.
>
> It appears that IE and Opera disable both controls inside and outside
> the <legend> whereas Firefox, Safari, and Chrome disable neither. Our
> preference would be to remove the clause "excluding those that are
> descendants of the fieldset element's first legend element child"
> from the spec.
http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=7591
Looks like the reasoning is that since nobody has reported that the
behaviour is important for compatibility (if it was then the browsers
would presumably have converged already), the behaviour should instead
be chosen to maximise its usefulness for authors, and the example given
in the spec is useful and so that's what the spec allows.
Are there any known compatibility issues here? And are there examples
where the spec's behaviour is less useful for authors than the alternatives?
(In a real site I've written something that's quite similar to the
spec's example, with a checkbox in the legend to enable/disable the
fieldset's contents, except I did it by hiding the content with CSS (to
save screen space) instead of disabling the form controls. I suppose it
would be good to hide the content *and* disable the controls when
they're meant to be inactive, so the example is not too hypothetical.)
--
Philip Taylor
pjt47@cam.ac.uk